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Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: The Sonnet
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1880
Type of Manuscript: fair copy manuscript with corrections and alternate readings

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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Note: Bookplate with standing female angel blowing trumpet and seated female angel. Between the two figures is a flowing banner on which is inscribed the owner's name. Below the figures and the ower's name is an inscribed poem.
THOMAS

JAMES WISE

HIS BOOK

  • BOOKS BRING ME FRIENDS
  • WHERE'ER ON EARTH I BE.
  • SOLACE OF SOLITUDE&
  • BONDS OF SOCIETY!
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Note: At the lower left of the manuscript DGR gives three alternate readings for the end of line 13.
more about Introductory Sonnet
The Sonnet
  • A Sonnet is a moment's monument, —
  • Memorial from thy soul's eternity
  • To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
  • Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
  • Of its own intricate fulness reverent:
  • Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
  • As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see
  • Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
  • A sonnet is a coin, whose face reveals
  • 10Thy self, and its reverse, to whom soul; — its rear-type to what Power 'tis due : —
  • Whether for tribute to the august appeals
  • Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
  • It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
  • In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
travailing breath

shuddering

labouring

difficult

Image of page [verso] page: [verso]
Note: On the back of the manuscript, DGR has scribbled various letter forms in pencil.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 1-1880.blms.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of The British Library